After returning from studying abroad, she cultivated the fields and looked for a good recipe for carrot planting; She cultivates "wise" seeds, helps farmers efficiently, and leads the villagers to get rich together. She is Tian Yuai, chairman of Zhongxiang Maotai Vegetable Planting Professional Cooperative and national rural revitalization youth pioneer.
The breeze blows the earth, and the ridges reflect the greenery. At the carrot planting base of the Maotai Vegetable Planting Cooperative in Hongwei Village, Chaihu Town, Zhongxiang City, Tian Yuai, chairman of the board of directors, is inspecting the growth of carrots in the demonstration field, which were sown in August.
"This demonstration area is 270 acres, planted in August, harvested in December, can continue until March next year, and then start planting soybeans, and then plant carrots after harvesting soybeans in August."
Tian Yuai told reporters that the cooperative adopts the "carrot-soybean (corn)" efficient planting model in the core planting base, and through the use of water and fertilizer integration system and smart agriculture monitoring system, the planting efficiency of the cooperative has been greatly improved.
"In the past, the traditional irrigation method was used, and the investment was relatively large, but now we use the integrated irrigation of water and fertilizer, which is a project promoted in the province, saving costs and increasing efficiency."
After graduating from university, he went to Cardiff University in United Kingdom to study business management and obtained a master's degree. When talking about why she chose to return to China to devote herself to agriculture, Tian Yuai said that it was her father's spirit of more than 20 years of diligent pursuit of the radish industry that led her to return home to "inherit her father's business".
"My father has been farming for more than 20 years, and he grew radishes in Yichang in the 90s of the last century. In 2011, he moved to Zhongxiang Development. So, in 2017, I also came to Zhongxiang after graduation, and I wanted to do better in agriculture in the hands of my generation. ”
In 2017, when Tian Yuai returned to China, his father, who had been planting white radish in Zhongxiang for 6 years, was worried about the transformation and development of the radish industry.
Zhongxiang is the main production area of white radish in Hubei Province, with a planting area of 100,000 mu in the city, due to the relatively mature white radish planting technology, many farmers have joined the ranks of white radish planting, which has also led to the homogenization of the development of the white radish industry; In addition, white radish is not easy to store, the market time is concentrated, and the planting income often fluctuates. After market research, Tian Yuai found that carrot cultivation in central regions such as Hubei is in a vacant state, and most of the carrots on the market come from Fujian, Shandong and other places. Can we change the planting of white radish to the planting of carrots, so as to fill the gap in the cultivation of carrots in Hubei?
"Although white radish and carrot are both called radish, they are actually two families, white radish is a cruciferous family, and carrot is a fanaceae, which is not the same thing at all. The technical difficulty of planting white radish is relatively low, and the carrot is very complicated. We are also the first agricultural subject in Hubei to explore the large-scale cultivation of carrots, and in the early stage of development, we paid a lot of tuition fees and took a lot of detours. ”
When the cooperative first began to explore carrot planting, Tian Yuai had traveled all over the country's main carrot producing areas, and when she visited Fujian, she felt that the local "one ridge and four rows" planting model was more feasible, so she specially invited technicians from Fujian to Zhongxiang and tried to plant 300 acres of carrots, but she soon fell behind.
"We started by borrowing from Fujian's planting model. Affected by the topography, Fujian is mostly small plots of land, so Fujian adopts 'one ridge and four rows', that is, a row of ridges and four rows of carrots. At that time, we directly introduced this model, but our climate, soil and other conditions in Zhongxiang were different from Fujian, and we planted almost 300 acres at that time, but failed before the harvest stage, losing more than 1 million yuan. ”
The failure of the trial did not discourage Tian Yuai, but made her more and more frustrated. In the end, Tian Yuai chose to take the planting model of Shandong as the basis, comprehensively learn from the technical points of other origins, and explore the carrot planting model suitable for Zhong Xiang according to local conditions.
"Shandong's 'one ridge and two rows' model is more suitable for us, but there are also differences. For example, the groundwater level in Shandong is very low, and the groundwater will only be pumped below 100 meters, while the groundwater level on our side is high, and the groundwater can be pumped out of the groundwater if it is generally less than 30 meters, so we have also made corresponding adjustments in the later stage of water supply and fertilization. Re-seeding machinery, we are also using Shandong rope braiding machinery, after several years of exploration, we now use the suction seeder single grain sowing. ”
At the same time of introducing advanced planting models and technologies, Tian Yuai also actively studied efficient agricultural production machinery, and the cooperative developed agricultural machinery and equipment integrating the three functions of ridge formation, sowing and laying drip irrigation belts, and the efficiency of carrot planting has been greatly improved. In 2022, Tian Yuai will take the lead in the construction of intelligent agricultural machinery equipment in the province, and all 56 large and medium-sized agricultural machinery equipment of the cooperative will realize the application of Beidou terminal navigation and real-time monitoring, which will greatly improve the efficiency of agricultural machinery operation and land utilization, reduce the work intensity of drivers, and rely on the mature mechanized farming and vegetable processing system of the cooperative to provide agricultural socialization services for surrounding farmers.
In the process of the development and growth of the cooperative, Tian Yuai did not forget to provide a variety of income channels such as land rent and labor income for the surrounding farmers. Chen Yanyun, a staff member of the People's Government of Chaihu Town, Zhongxiang City, said that the cooperative has solved the employment problem of many farmers in Chaihu Town through land transfer and the absorption of migrant workers.
In Luzhuang Village, Chaihu Town, Gao Yuhong, a village cadre, told reporters that the Maotai Vegetable Planting Professional Cooperative has transferred land in the second, third, fifth and sixth groups of Luzhuang Village, involving more than 120 households and 756 mu, and the average household income has increased by nearly 20,000 yuan.
Today, Tian Yuai's Maotai Vegetable Planting Professional Cooperative has built a vegetable processing and cold chain logistics base covering an area of 35 acres, equipped with 12 pre-cooling warehouses and 4 large storage warehouses, with a storage capacity of more than 10,000 tons. The cooperative's carrot planting area has reached 5,500 acres, and at the same time, it has driven the immigrants in Chaihu Town to develop 2,000 acres of carrot planting, with an annual output of 21,000 tons and an output value of more than 55 million yuan, which has become the largest carrot planting base in Hubei Province.
Tian Yuai said that the road to agriculture is long, and she hopes that the new young people who insist on running on the road of agriculture can take root in the land and thrive like carrots in the field. (Some materials are provided by the interviewee and Zhongxiang Agricultural Machinery Development Center)
(Reporter: Fu Yuehao Correspondent: Wang Long, Shi Liu, Yao Chanling, Xie Yi, Hu Xiong, Editor: Ma Jing, Editor: Tu Dan, Producer: Yang Bin)